The Second Winter (7 page)

Axel Madsen, a foot shorter than Fredrik, shouldered his way into the vestibule. His coat was dripping wet. He pulled a wool cap off his head, unloosing a mane of yellow hair that didn’t match the dark stubble covering his cheeks. “They’re awake,” he said. “A whole platoon. They’re on the prowl — if we don’t go now, we’ll lose our chance.”

Fredrik grabbed his coat off a hook. “Where are the Jews?” The cottage reverberated with the rustle of his long arms sliding into the coat’s heavy sleeves, and he didn’t hear the floorboards squeak behind him.

“Brandt’s meadow.”

“In the barn?” Fredrik reached for the door.

“I’ll go with you.” Oskar’s voice stopped Fredrik short.

He twisted around, faced his son. Oskar had pulled on his work pants, but he was still in socks and an undershirt. “Get back to bed.” Fredrik’s reaction was instinctive, absolute.

Axel eyed the taller man. Fredrik’s pupils were dilated. His fingers had left damp smudges on the edge of the door. “Maybe
we should let him come. With the rain, the fields will be nearly impassible. I’m told that two of them are feeble —”

“This isn’t a boy’s work,” Fredrik said to his son.

“I’m old enough,” Oskar protested.

“Let him come,” Axel repeated. “It’s a long way to the crossing. He can help carry their belongings. And when daylight comes, it might be good to have a kid with us.”

“You don’t know this boy,” Fredrik said. “We might end up having to carry him, too.”

“I can help you,” Oskar said. “You’ll see.”

Fredrik examined his eldest child’s face, creased with wrinkles from his straw pillow. Oskar was a weakling. He would weigh them down, as heavy as a sack of bricks. But the drug was clouding Fredrik’s judgment. Perhaps it was time for the boy to prove himself. His jaw was clenched so tightly that his teeth were beginning to ache. “Come along, then,” he said. “But make it quick. Get your boots and coat. And you had better not wake Amalia.”

Fredrik led Axel outside onto the porch. Two minutes later, when Oskar joined them, they started off on the shoulder of the gravel road that led across the southern edge of the farm, skirting the town of Aalborg.
I see there was a fire
, Fredrik said,
over at Jepsen’s place
. Oskar lost track of the conversation. He remained a few steps behind the two men, his eyes fastened on the heels of Fredrik’s boots. From time to time, he lifted his gaze and caught a glimpse of his father’s profile, set off against the darker shadows beyond him. The tramp of their footsteps rang in his ears, louder and louder.

The barn where Farmer Brandt housed his livestock took shape beneath the low sky like the mouth of a cave. Oskar slowed his
step. His heart was racing, though he didn’t want to admit it. If they were caught, they would be shot on sight — he had overheard Axel say as much to Fredrik. In the last fifteen minutes, the two men had fallen conspicuously quiet, and despite the childlike invincibility Oskar had always felt in the presence of his father, doubt had begun to impregnate the silence. The closer they got to the barn, the less certain he was that they would find the Jews waiting for them there. Perhaps they were walking into a trap. He dropped behind another couple of paces. By the time Fredrik reached the door, Axel, too, had slipped into his wake.

From inside the building, Fredrik could hear the grunt of pigs, even over the incessant rush of wind. Bits of rotten wood flaked off the door onto his fingers. Jens Brandt had fallen on hard times. Fifteen years ago, he had been one of the largest landholders in Jutland. After the first war, he had begun to drink and then to gamble, and he had had to sell off his legacy, acre by acre, to pay his debts. This pathetic barn was just about everything that the farmer had left. Fredrik hesitated. He didn’t like the feeling of decay on his fingers. He didn’t like this fecal smell. Then he yanked the door open and stepped inside. Behind him, Axel waited a few beats. When the night remained quiet, he followed his friend into the void.

Fredrik withdrew an electric torch from his pocket. He had scavenged the apparatus off an infantryman whom he had found lying dead in a ditch a few weeks before. Since then the battery had become almost useless. “Brandt?” His whisper echoed hollowly at the far end of the barn. When there was no answer, he switched on the torch. The farmer’s body emerged from the dark, supine on the dirt floor.

Oskar recoiled a step. Axel caught him in his callused hands, held him steady. Fredrik whipped out his Luger, peered into the shadows as far as the torch allowed. Certain that the
farmer was dead, he knelt beside him, pulled the collar of his coat back from his throat, searched for a pulse.

The farmer opened his eyes.

Oskar yelped. Axel jumped. Fredrik grabbed the farmer by the lapels, hoisted him like he wasn’t the three-hundred-pound slob that he was, tossed him backward onto the hard floor.

“What in God’s name —”

The old farmer blinked, coughed, wiped the remains of his dinner from his gray beard. “I was feeding the cow. I must have passed out.”

Fredrik noticed a broken kerosene lantern in the dirt. “It’s lucky you didn’t burn the barn down — it’s the last thing you own, isn’t it?”

The farmer hunched forward, coughed again. “How much time before dawn?” He raised himself onto a single knee, pushed himself up with a groan. From out of the shadows, a pig answered with a bleat.

“It must be three already,” Axel responded.

“Light a flame,” Fredrik instructed. “This torch isn’t going to last much longer.”

The farmer squinted at Oskar. “Who’s this?”

“My son.”

Fredrik had answered for him before Oskar was able to himself. “My name’s Oskar,” he said.

“Following your father into the family business?” Still dusting himself off, the farmer snickered, then found another lantern hanging from a hook on a post, struck a match. When he held the flame to the wick, Oskar saw how greasy his hands were. His knuckles were scabbed, and there was grime beneath his splintering fingernails.

Fredrik clicked off the tin torch. “Axel says two of them are sick.”

“Not sick.” The farmer took the match away from the lantern, extinguished it with a flick of his wrist, lowered the glass back down over the flame. “Old. But there are only three of them — not a lot to worry about.”

Fredrik exhaled his frustration. “It’s the same work for three or ten —”

“Don’t worry,” the farmer said. “These three can pay like ten.”

“Where are they?” Axel asked.

The farmer jerked his fat head toward the back of the barn. “Keeping warm with the pigs.”

“We had better get started,” Axel said. “It’s a long way, and the rain is getting worse. It’s going to be slow.”

“What are the arrangements?” Fredrik asked.

“You’ll drive my cousin’s truck to Agersted,” the farmer said. “Then you’ll walk the rest of the way to the coast.”

“You’ve got the truck loaded?”

“Fifty bushels of barley, twenty casks of beer. My cousin’s expecting the truck in Agersted. He’ll be taking it to market himself. This war isn’t all bad — we got a good price on the barley, let me tell you.”

Fredrik rubbed his hands together. “Go get them, why don’t you?” Oskar noticed how jittery his father was. His cheeks shimmered — the glow of the lantern revealed a beading layer of sweat. When the farmer disappeared into the recesses of the barn, Fredrik felt for something in the pocket of his jacket, then excused himself. “I’m going to take a leak,” he said to Axel. On his way to the door, his boots hit the earth too hard, as if he was expecting a downward slope, Oskar thought. The shock of his weight telegraphed itself through his long limbs.

The latch was cold on Fredrik’s fingers. Already, his body had begun to acclimate to the damp heat of the animals. When he pushed the door open, the wind smacked his face. Freezing
rain stung his cheeks, blinding him. Normally, he would have simply popped a few pills. He had a vial in his pocket, and even though he wasn’t a user, Axel probably would have wanted one, too. But Oskar was here with them — his presence was throwing him off. And Fredrik was fatigued. He had gone nearly a week without sleep. Last night, he had crept across the farm and burglarized the Nielsens’ grain locker. He didn’t like stealing from the Nielsens, because it only meant that they had less to pay him. But the grain locker was an easy mark, and he needed the money. And then the fire at Jepsen’s warehouse had distracted him, and he hadn’t gotten into bed until after two. The night before, he had been caught in Aalborg after curfew and had ended up staying with Isabella. The Italian bitch snored like a man, and the prostitutes in the next room had kept him up half the night whoring with German soldiers. The night before that, he had gone with Axel to Skagen to transport some contraband. The night before that — Fredrik closed the door behind him, found shelter on the side of the barn beneath the overhang. There wasn’t much time. He removed the syringe from his jacket pocket.

When he switched on the torch, its weak glow encircled him in a small bubble of light. He knelt down, and his knee sank into the mud. He raised his trouser cuff, plunged the grimy, fetid needle into a vein just above his ankle. The torch flickered as the battery drained, and the bubble of light grew even smaller. Standing up again, he reached his hands for its smooth edges, expecting contact with a layer of film. The vial of pills rattled in his pocket. He uncapped the brown bottle without looking at it, dropped a capsule onto his tongue, then another. When he unbuttoned his pants, his hands were shaking.

He watched the uneven stream of dank yellow piss penetrate the edge of the filmy bubble then dig a ragged groove
into the saturated earth. The urine burned, and he stanched the flow between his finger and thumb. He hadn’t bathed since spending the night with Isabella. The smell of their sex wafted into his nostrils. The crude mix of chemicals ripped a gash into the lining of his heart, tore holes into his lungs, seeped like contaminated water into the marrow in the core of his bones. Behind him, the muffled voices inside the barn became the cry of doves.

When Fredrik stepped back through the rotting door, the Jews — an old man, his wife, and their daughter — were huddled around the lantern like moths, whispering to one another in proper German. At the sound of his entrance, they stopped talking, and all three turned toward him, their mouths poised in perfect circles. Rather than feel any pity for this family, Fredrik had to swallow a flux of disgust. The old Jew was so ugly that he could barely look at him. His eyes were dull brown stones behind the polished lenses of a pair of gold-framed glasses. He hadn’t shaved in days, and he didn’t carry his graying stubble well. But there was no question that he was filthy rich. His winter coat was cashmere. Cashmere! And underneath, he wore a sweater that was also cashmere and his collar was cinched with a tie. The old Jew’s wife was equally repugnant, and like her husband she was dressed for the opera, not this trek. She wore a long wool skirt and stockings, shoes with heels — though, true enough, they were cloddish heels, as square and heavy as the head of a hammer. And then there was their daughter. Fredrik measured her breasts underneath her sweater — she wore it tight, as if she wanted to tantalize him. He saw how pale the naked skin of her legs was beneath her skirt. He noticed, too, the way this schoolgirl was
looking at him, sideways, flushed — following him with her eyes. Though she was trying to conceal her interest, perhaps she had even favored him with a shy smile. The amphetamine coursed through his veins, and for a moment Fredrik pictured the prim bitch on her knees in front of him, her skirt yanked above her voluptuous ass, her head forced into the dirt. He would plant her face into the soil, he would clamp his fingers around her throat. But then her father stepped between them, as if he was able to read Fredrik’s thoughts, and when Fredrik looked at her again, she was no longer the coquette he first imagined. Her face had become her father’s. Her eyes were just as dull. Her nose was just the same shape. And her mouth — it was a thick-lipped, repellent hole filled with a jumble of crooked, coffee-stained teeth. “What are you waiting for?” he asked Brandt. “We don’t have time to waste.”